The Maryland General Assembly wasn't even invited to the game, but members of a budget conference committee drafted themselves into the controversy over how to save the Towson University baseball program, which the university had cut last month.

Maravene Loeschke, the university president, cut the men's baseball and soccer teams last month, citing funding issues and compliance with Title IX. She declared the cuts represented the only way to help the school meet its federal obligation requiring colleges to offer equivalent sports opportunities to women.

"We are 61 percent female at Towson, but we have fallen back to 52 percent support of our female athletes, and we have to make up that difference," Loeschke told 11 News on Tuesday.

The governor proposed to provide directly to Towson $600,000 from his supplemental budget over two years to help keep the baseball program alive.

Lawmakers stepped up to the plate, agreeing to send the governor's set aside, but send it to the University System of Maryland. The money could then be used as a matching fund.

"We the legislators didn't want to be in a position where we were securing on guaranteeing a funding on an athletic program at a particular school. We wanted out of that," said Senate Budget and Taxation Committee Chairman Edward Kasemeyer, D-District 12.

"There's a group that's going to raise some funds. This provides an incentive so that it's just not an outright 'here you go,'" said St. Mary's County Delegate John Bohanan, D-District 29B, a member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee and chairman of the House Spending Affordability Committee.

To help Towson comply with its Title IX women sports obligations, lawmakers agreed to issue $2 million in state bonds to pay for a new women's softball field.

"The condition of the women's softball field today is nowhere near what they have for men's. You have to have parity according to the federal government," Bohanan said.

The compromise also revealed difficulties in requiring college athletic programs to be self-sufficient, and that Title IX should be a goal, not a mandate.

"I think that the whole Title IX program has to be looked at closely. At the end of the day, does everything have to adhere to it all at once?" said Baltimore County Sen. Jim Brochin, D-District 42.

Towson University officials were contacted by 11 News for comment but they did not return those calls.